Hi Everyone
I am working on a website that has a locked area using SiteLok. For the most part I have that sorted out, but I have ran into a new problem.
One of the locked members only pages contains a DateSnap calendar tied to a Google Calendar account. My problem is that in order to share that calendar with DateSnap it has to be public and Google will search it. My client wants that info to be private.
Is there any way to share the Google Calendar with DateSnap with a private or unlisted link?
I figured out that I can use the Private Link under the iCal settings in Google Calendar, but when you click on a event in the DateSnap stack it downloads a .ics file. I am not sure now to open the event in a model window to show the description. I don’t need users downloading .ics files or linking back to a public Google Calendar. I just want then to see the schedule, and click for details. I feel like I am missing something.
If I can get this last part of the puzzle working I will be off to the races.
You may want to contact Adrian from Vibralogix directly. I don’t think he’ll know about Datesnap, but he may have some good suggestions regarding Google Calendars working with SiteLok.
How many events do you have? If it’s not that many then perhaps you can add then manually instead of using Google Cal.
I may have solved the problem myself. I updated the stack, reset Rapidweaver and all is well. I now have a Google Calendar linked to my DateSnap page that is linked with a Private iCal address. The descriptions now open up in a model window and the page access is controlled with SiteLok.
I am not sure why it wasn’t working previously.
I have 0 events right now. The website will be handed off to the client and I am sure they will fill it up once they get their hands on it.
Interesting… so are you saying that you are using a private i-cal URL in Google calendar? would that not make it publicly accessible after all? It sounds weird. Why would you put a private link on a public site? What happens when a stranger uses the public Google Cal-URL?
Secondly, yes, unfortunately Googles approach is that all services are central to THEM, not a third party. What you really want is a way to directly edit and publish calendar data somewhere (source data). The fact that Apple allows true private (group) calendars is a great work around, but ideally you would want a personal web interface for your client to edit the (any) calendar.
Have you checked out the Event Calendar stack? It has the ability to read a(ny) file to populate the calendar/event list) All you need is a way to generate or update the file.
If any of the available CMS solutions would have a stack that allows for editing a calendar file or a file that is formatted to populate a calendar, the whole google issue and all related complications wil go away. Not sure why no one is jumping all over that…
The site is not public… it is for members only. I am using SiteLok to control page access.
Understood, I mean how can you keep google from making your private calendar URL public?
Google Generates and provides a Private link to a .iCS file on their server. You can use this URL in your DateSnap Calendar as an iCloud Calendar link. When you do it this way, you don’t have to make your Google Calendar “Public”. You can turn that feature OFF in the Google Calendar settings. IF for some reason someone gets the private link that should’t have it, Google provides a reset for that private link and it will generate a new URL.
It isn’t perfect, but when using the SiteLok to control access to that calendar page, it does exactly what I need it to do. The only other was to do something like this and keep it simple for my client would be to build the website with WP and use a plugin. But we like to avoid WP when possible so this does the trick.
